Chapter 22: Chapter 22 – PATH

The next week was the longest I had gone so far without being taken into the Grey City. Time passed slowly and I constantly felt on edge.

In contrast, Huang seemed almost chipper, occasionally texting me reminders of our plan and addendums he had thought of. Before I went through any more currents, he wanted to run tests to see what the sentry tower was capable of. We knew that the last time we had been there, it had changed to show a map of the whole Grey City. We didn’t know if that change was permanent or if my presence was necessary to form the map.

I was almost relieved when, walking home from work on the following Monday, I looked up to find myself back in the misty, colourless streets of the Grey City. Anticipating it for days really sucked.

I got to a secluded area and waited. After a few minutes, the shape of a shiny dragon swooped by overhead.

“Stay there, there’s a demon nearby!” he called.

I winced and pressed myself against the wall of the alleyway. The Gargoyle plunged down to a nearby street and the sounds of a fight carried through the buildings.

“Taken care of,” Huang reported, then appeared trotting into my alleyway with a few smudges of ink across his feathers. The Gargoyle appeared to be fully healed from the Waterfront debacle two entries ago.

I let out a breath. “I’m glad I didn’t try to go anywhere.”

“If you did, you could have transformed,” Huang pointed out. “I know you tend to lose control, but loss of control is better than dying. I’d just have to stay clear of you until you woke up. Not a big deal.”

It seemed like kind of a big deal to me. “Alright, so… You’ll head to the tower alone?”

“Yep. Let’s get you to the Sanctuary first,” Huang said, leaping back into the air. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

We followed stray cobblestones and trees to the Garden District. After only a couple of turns, Huang called again, “Get into that alley on your left! There’s a sentry up ahead.”

Either we were having bad luck today, or there were more demons around than usual. I darted into the alleyway. Huang swooped down, then flapped up high, gripping a thrashing snake sentry in his talons. He dropped it back to earth to kill it.

“Keep alert,” Huang cautioned me as he rose back into the air.

I scowled—obviously, my spatial sense was on high alert; it wasn’t like I enjoyed walking around here blind. The gritty ice and pavement of the Grey City pressed on my senses; quiet and still.

As we moved closer towards the Sanctuary, trees starting to appear in the streets, I sensed something poisonous at the edge of my spatial sense. Not wanting to yell and give away my position, I stopped and pointed frantically in that direction.

He swooped a little lower to check it out. “I don’t sense anyth—”

Before he could finish the thought, something huge and winged, a hunkering bat demon, sprang up from among the buildings. It tackled him out of the sky.

I swore and put myself against the wall, preparing to switch forms if needed. But Huang twisted out of the bat’s grip before the two of them hit the ground, kicking off of it and gliding away.

The bat crashed down out of sight and Huang looped around to pursue. “Don’t worry, I got it,” he said, and again the sounds of a scuffle carried through the streets. My sense didn’t quite reach far enough to see what was happening, but Huang took to the sky again a minute later.

Thank goodness the Gargoyle was in full working order again. After a few more twists and turns, we arrived at the front of the nondescript church building with its double doors and peeling roof shingles. The Sanctuary.

Huang landed and settled next to the doors. “All right. I’m off to the tower.”

“It’s busy out there today,” I remarked, frowning. “Watch yourself. Something might be up.”

“It’s fine,” Huang replied. “Demon activity fluctuates sometimes, that’s all. I’ll be back shortly.”

“All right then,” I said, pulling open the door to the Sanctuary as he took off. “Good luck.”

I closed the door behind me and was immediately enveloped by the calm, late-afternoon sunlight of the Sanctuary.

I shook my head. I’d almost forgotten the weird aura of this place; how different it seemed from the rest of the Grey City.

Well, I’d have to find some way to occupy myself until Huang came back. I moved through the foyer and entered the atrium, looking over the chairs and tables that filled the space.

A dark shadow passed overhead, briefly breaking the golden light. I grimaced. I still didn’t like that very much, but I was probably safe in here… right?

My gaze drifted around the room and then stopped suddenly on the chairs grouped at the tables. Those chairs looked…  weirdly familiar. As a matter of fact, I’d seen that exact style of chair just recently, when I’d returned home to Ottawa for Christmas.

They looked exactly like the chairs at my parents’ house.

… Okay, that was kind of weird. Not much chance my parents and the Grey City shopped at the same furniture supplier. Starting to feel a little freaked out, I started to wander the perimeter of the room, looking over it for anything else familiar.

Certain other parts of the room also tugged at my memory. There were curved supports of wood holding up the ceiling which bore a striking resemblance to the church I’d attended as a child. The tapestries that were hanging from the ceiling, sewn with images of city skylines, resembled the Ottawa skyline a bit, from the exact angle you could see from my parent’s backyard.

I guess it was no more or less freaky than the fact that there was a statue of me here. The Sanctuary had known what we looked like, and apparently knew us even better than that, well enough to pluck specific surroundings from our memories.

To confirm, I’d have to ask Huang if anything in the Sanctuary resembled things from his memories.

My pacing took me around to the far side of the atrium and to the heavy red curtains that hung in front of the statue room. I hesitated, but I couldn’t help ducking inside. I didn’t particularly want another look, but I couldn’t seem to escape a kind of morbid curiosity.

I immediately locked eyes with my statue-self, and it sent a chill down my spine. He stood as still as ever, helmet under his arm, solemn expression on his face.

“What are you looking at?” I muttered at him. Thankfully, he did not respond.

Soldier Huang stood upon his own dais beside mine, but I found my eyes drawn to the statues of the women that stood opposite to us.

Would they soon be joining us in here? The Viking woman had her brows together in a glare, while the other woman with her draping fabrics and spear looked resigned, almost sad. She looked like she might be a historical warrior from an African country, but I knew so little of those cultures I couldn’t say for sure.

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My spatial sense told me that the statues were made of dense, smooth stone, one with the stone floor under the carpet. There was nothing new to be learned here. I gave the statues one last apprehensive look, some primal part of my brain always expecting them to start moving, and backed out of the room.

I was pacing the atrium when a sound near the door made me startle. I jumped around to face the entrance and Huang raised his hands in mock surrender.

I sighed. “A little warning, next time?”

“You know demons can’t get in here, so I don’t know who you thought it was,” Huang chuckled. He moved forward to lean on the nearest chair. “Anyway, we’re in the clear. It worked! Even without you there, the sentry tower is still able to bring up a view of all the different districts. I’m able to track where you are and see where all the demons are, as well.”

“Did you see that district that I entered, the one with all the ice?” I asked.

“Well, no. But I imagine that would be an intersection between the waterfront and the glass district, right? Not its own independent district.” He took a breath. “Besides, we kind of have another problem.”

“Oh, good,” I commented. “What?”

“Well… demon activity is extremely high right now. Not as bad as when you went to Ottawa, but it’s especially concentrated around the Waterfront.”

“Damn,” I muttered. “We better… take care of that, I guess. But the Leviathan was pretty badly injured, I don’t know if it would be healed up yet.”

“It’s been a week. You should be in fighting condition if you heal as fast as I do,” Huang said. “We should go clear them out—if we don’t, they’ll fill up all the districts and we’ll have a rough time the next time we enter.”

I reluctantly agreed.

We exited the Sanctuary and emerged into the snowy streets. We were immediately confronted by a twelve-foot snake sentry, which let out a piercing shriek, its mouth opening down its neck.

Huang jumped forward and transformed in an instant, wingbeats buffeting me as he flapped into a flying tackle. The snake’s cry was cut off as it struggled with the Gargoyle, managing to leave a couple of scratches on the Gargoyle’s shoulder. The Gargoyle bit into its neck and slammed its head against the ground until it died.

“It called out. More will be here soon,” Huang reported. “Let’s go, fast.”

We took off. I scanned the area for pipes that would take us to the Waterfront, aware all the while that we were only running towards more danger.

“Stay clear of me if I transform,” I cautioned Huang as I jogged toward some pipes.

“Oh, don’t worry, I plan to,” he said. “At least you seem to have made some progress on keeping your head since the first time.”

“Not enough,” I panted. Sure, I didn’t immediately lose consciousness each time anymore, but I had no doubt that I’d attack Huang again if either of us slipped up.

We soon reached the Waterfront. There were no storm clouds and lightning like last time, but as we neared the water I could see several demons rising up from it.

“Let’s go!” Huang said leaping up into the sky. I ran a few steps and shapeshifted mid-stride, suddenly a hundred times faster and stronger. A snake-demon appeared on the docks and I tackled it, hitting it with so much force with my shoulder that it sailed far out into the water.

I swam past its body to make sure it was dead, then made a beeline for the demons in the water. Unlike last time, these weren’t water-based demons, and they were slow and clumsy swimmers. Bone cats scrabbled at the water with their fleshless legs and snake sentries writhed uselessly. Easy prey.

I made swift work of them. Certain movements I made tugged at pain in my chest and shoulder, but the Leviathan seemed to be almost completely recovered since the last encounter.

“I’m going to go make sure no more are coming through,” I said as I dived.

“I’ll patrol the shore,” Huang replied, his voice fading in strength as we parted ways.

The water darkened as I descended, and my senses warned me of another demon struggling through the water beneath me. I barely registered what it looked like before slicing through it effortlessly mid-stroke, then continuing to swim.

There; I could see the current where the demons were emerging. One more was clawing its way out; looking less like it was swimming along with the current and more like the current was a tear in a sheet of fabric from which it was emerging. It appeared to be a snake sentry.

I brought my jaws down on its foot as it reached out, then flung it from the current. As it spiralled away in the water, I plunged my head closer to the current.

The demon had made the current look like some kind of portal, but to me, it was the same as the last time I had investigated it. Just a path of moving water and ideas.

The thoughts and ideas of this current were particularly muted. Unlike the other currents, I had to listen closely to understand: it whispered home, new, transformation, sovereignity, ally, complete. None of that meant anything to me.

My throw hadn’t quite killed the snake-sentry, and it was rising to the surface, so I wheeled around to take care of it. As I slashed my claws through its neck and its body began to dissipate, my spatial sense showed me that the water was calm once again. That had been the last demon.

The Leviathan’s instincts calmed down and I started to feel the urge to patrol. Thankfully, that drive to patrol territory wasn’t even close to the overwhelming rage the Leviathan felt towards the demons. I could deal with it.

Patrol later, I assured the Leviathan, rising to the surface to report to Huang.

He had been fighting one or two demons on the shore, and looked up from their inky corpses as I surfaced.

When I described the strange current where the demons had been emerging, he exclaimed, “You should check it out and see where it leads! I’ll fly back to the tower and track you.”

“I can’t help but feel I might be wandering into their nest,” I pointed out. “That does seem to be where they are coming from. There could be a million demons there, for all I know…”

“You can make a tactical retreat, like you did last time,” Huang suggested. “Don’t go far from where you emerge. Just get a quick look around, let me read your position and see where you end up. Then, come right back.”

“… All right. I’ll give you some time to get to the tower,” I said. There were a hundred things that could go wrong, but it occurred to me that if there was a demon ‘nest’, that meant there was something we could destroy to end the threat at its source. Maybe that was the end goal of this ‘game’ that Leviathan kept referring to in my dreams. Maybe that was how we could win.

After what felt like about twenty minutes, I dove back into the water, letting my spatial sense seek out the demons’ current.

It hadn’t gone anywhere. Steeling myself for what could await me on the other side, I swam into it and let it take me away.

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